Autobiographical Remembering: Memory as Resitance in Bengali Dalit Women’s Narratives

Abstract

This paper makes an attempt to explore how the concept of memory works as a tool of resistance in the narratives of the Bengali Dalit women writers in the Partitioned Bengal. The Bengali Dalit women have been marginalized in different ways, and the history of these women has been neglected. But the atma-katha (life-story) of the Bengali Dalit women seeks to question the accepted official historical record of Bengal. In this paper, I propose to examine the narratives of Dr. Puspa Bairagya and Kalyani Thakur Charal which were chiefly produced in the twenty-first century Bengal and were anti-caste narratives and thereby provide an insight into the counter-memories of the Bengali Dalit women. I would like to apply the autobiographical memory theory to the narratives of these writers. My prospective paper endeavors to illuminate personal agency and healing and would hope to generate a new understanding of the texts in the Indian context.